Dennis Potters Blue Remembered Hills :: Dennis Potters Blue Remembered Hills Essays

Dennis Potters' Blue Remembered Hills A.E. Houseman’s poem looks back at childhood as a â€Å"land of lost content† meaning that when you are a child you are innocent and you don’t have a care in the world. Also he says that childhood is a â€Å"happy highway where I went / and cannot come again† meaning that they are the best years of your life but you can never go back there. Dennis Potter took the poem and turned it in to a play about a group of children who were on there school holidays in the forest of dean in Gloucester. Potter is asking if childhood is such a land of lost content and is children so innocent. The poem was set in the summer of 1943 and there were 5 boys and 2 girls who were played by adults. The first person we meet is Willie who is playing at being a spitfire. Next we meet peter who is a bit of a bully. There is Audrey who is a bit of an ugly tag-along and then there is Angela who is a pretty girl who orders Audrey about. There is also Raymond who has a stutter and John he is a bit of a hero and is number 2 last there is Donald he is a bit of a pyromaniac. In the play the behaviour is realistic because that is what they would really do if they were in the forest of dean. They do things that only children do for example in scene 5 Donald, Angela and Audrey are fanaticising about being adults and are playing houses. Also they laugh about knickers being made out of silk. John and peter have a fight in scene 11. It all started in scene 10 Raymond was standing on his head and Audrey shouted that there was blood in his ear and John was standing up for Raymond and Peter was trying to make Raymond loose and then they get in to a fight and John won and peter was running away â€Å"Run, babby, run!† and peter ends up in the old barn talking to Donald. In this part of the play Dennis Potter is trying to make them look as if they are not so innocent. They are being deliberately cruel when they are trying to knock a squirrel out of a tree and they eventually knock it out and kill it. An incident of when they are unintentionally being cruel is when they trap Donald in the barn when Donald is starting a fire in amongst the hay.